Fin-de-Siècle British Socialism and a Prelude to the Melville Revival

Abstract

This article reassesses the nature and scope of the Melville revival movement in late nineteenth-century Britain and redeems British socialism’s role in the reception of Herman Melville on both sides of the Atlantic. In its nascent stage, British socialism sought alternatives to middle-class ideologies, enlarging its scope to encompass not only socio-economic but also humanitarian projects with a belief in the ethical transformation for the individual as a viable force of social change. These socialists, mostly with Fabian connections, such as Robert Buchanan and Henry Salt, were deeply interested in American Romanticism, particularly writers who were unjustly reviewed in their home country, namely Whitman and Thoreau. Melville was also being incorporated into this agenda. Aiming to reach a working-class readership, socialists planned to publish his work under the Walter Scott Publishing Company’s Camelot Series. The failure of this project precluded the possibility of their Melville revival reaching fruition, but Melville’s distinguished American quality, born out of Young America’s antagonistic feelings toward British tradition, provided them with both a means to think outside British middle-class ideologies and a vision of a transatlantic and potentially anti-colonialist literary collaboration.